How To Lower Cpu Usage?

Replies: 2 | Post Date: 2010-08-13 | User: Stuart J Mazzoli | Forums: answers.microsoft.com I am running windows 7. I took my tower outside yesterday and blew the dust out of it. When i started it back up i noticed that my cpu indicator was hi when nothing was running. I have been noticing things have been running slow and at times my tower makes a slight reving sound. How can i lower the cpu usage. I know i need to eliminate certain apps from starting up but i wouldn't know which ones. Can you help?Task manage shows iexplore.exe a couple of times with large numbers can i just click 'end processes'?

I have searched the forums and the internet and even contacted microsoft customer support but cannot find any help. I upgraded from vista 64-bit to windows 7 64-bit home premium a couple of months ago. I guess i was the only person that never encountered a problem with vista so i was expecting a smooth transition to windows 7. The problem that i am experiencing with my hp desktop is very high cpu usage after some random period of low usage after it is first turned on. The cpu usage goes from a few percent to high 80’s to mid 90’s and everything slows down to a crawl.

This random period can go from minutes to days. Shutting the system completely down works most of the time. When checking task manager, no processes indicate high usage at all with processes running less than a few percentages after an initial spike after starting a program.

When i check "show processes from all users", the only high cpu usage is with system idle process and nothing else. I’ve redone the upgrade couple of times and then finally bit the bullet and did a clean install, but nothing helps. I’ve kept track of the processes and the services in task manager that are running when it is in low cpu usage and after it goes into high cpu usage and nothing changes. I’ve tried too many things on my own to mention here, but would appreciate any suggestions anyone might have. My hardware specs are as follows:

I upgraded from vista to win 7 on release day and have had no problems until recently. Over the last few days, my cpu usage will spike up to 100% at random intervals and stay there for a long period of time. When i check task manager and show processes from all users, services.exe is fluctuating anywhere from the low 50 to low 70% in usage. When the computer is running normally, services.exe is around the high single digits. I've uninstalled and programs that i installed immediately prior to the problem happening (and it's happening again as i type this) and i've run comprehensive virus/malware scans using microsoft security essentials and the eset online scanner.

Both found some adware stuff and removed it, but no virus or serious malware issues. This has been going on for several days and has made my computer almost unusable, and i'm at a dead end for what to do or where to look next. I hate to to a reinstall because the original install was so recent, so any advice i can try to avoid starting over would be great.

I'm a fairly experienced computer user, and have a basic understanding of computing theory. I was wanting to propose an idea about the high cpu usage in windows 7 and see if anyone with a deeper understanding could tell me if i'm looking this in the right way. Not only have i had high cpu usage, but my ram is running at a constant 50-60% as well. I have a pretty cheap setup, only running a 1. 8ghz amd athlon and 2 gb of ram. However in my laptop which only has about half the Computing power and yet doesn't have this high usage. So here's my question.could the high usage issue be in the fact that the system bus takes up more resources to operate.

Meaning say for example, and only for example as i know it's not this simple, a 32 bit system with 2gb ram uses 512mb of ram while idling, shouldn't a 64-bit system need 1gb of ram while idling? Again, i know that usage percentages aren't set in stone like that, but i was hoping to simplify my hypothesis/question enough for you (the readers) to understand what i'm asking. If this does sound like a reasonable suggestion, could anyone tell me how i might go about testing it in order to prove my theory. I may just be looking at the meaning of 32 and 64 bit all wrong, and if so can someone please explain it to me better?

Often, i turn on my computer and it slows down a lot when i get to the login screen. It hangs on the "please wait. " Screen for a minute until finally letting me log in and then goes to the "welcome" screen and hangs for a minute more until it finally pulls up my desktop. The cpu usage stays at 100% for a while. Sometime it goes down to a normal level, but other times it will stay there until i restart my computer (which usually leads to the same thing).

I used malwarebytes' to check to see if i had any viruses, malware, spyware, whatnot and it came up clean. I defragged my computer and that didn't work, i looked to see if there was a program eating up the cpu and there wasn't and then i tried anti rootkit and that found nothing. So, i am pretty *** right now because i have yet to find a solution.

I would like to start by saying "i love windows 7!". I have an hp pavilion dv9720us which was originally purchased with vista home premium 32-bit. I did a clean install of windows 7 64-bit and added 2 gb of ram (total 4 gb). Other than a view driver problems, solved through the hp forums all as worked well except for one site i access frequently. A friend and i share documents via a google documents site and now when i try to access the site my cpu usage shoots up to 50-80% and the only option i have is to use task manager to get me out of the site. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I have the problem of cpu usage high and everytime this happens my laptop completely freezes and i have to press the radio button on my laptop until it shuts down and also i've tried everything that was in the forum in this site like clean boot, startup items, disk clean up, sfc/scannow and most of the stuff. It completely bothers me and it happens a lot when i'm using my laptop, please help me. My cpu model: intel core 2 due processor t6600 (2. 2 ghz 800 mhz fsb)

Whenever a program is "not responding", i'll hit "end task"in "task manager", then another window opens up with a choice to select "end now" and it'll take forever for it to terminate. Meanwhile, i cannot do anything else as task mgr shows 100% cpu usage. I notice dumprep.exe is causing the 100% cpu usage and i can only wait until it completes whatever it is doing. Most often, i'm waiting several minutes. I'm not sure what started this problem as in the past i never recalled this happening.

I have seen many posts in this forum about high cpu usage but i have tried everything and the performance tab is still displaying 100% cpu usage, while if i open resource monitor it says cpu usage stays around 6% on my relatively brand new computer. Does anybody know whats going on?

My new laptop with windows 7 pre-installed is running slow. Task manager shows cpu usage and memory usage at or nearly always on 100% even with no programs running. Checked out various user forums and tried using the tools within win7, but no joy.

Opening an older program will start run32dll.exe, raise cpu usage, but not successfully start the selected program while running windows 7 x64. Up until this point, i have had no problems with windows 7. My system came installed with it, and i have recovery discs (although not with me right now, more to follow). I installed a program the other day and set it for win 98/me compatibility mode.

After executing the program, run32dll.exe would start and while cpu usage would go up to 80-90, the selected program would not start. Is run32dll corrupted (viruscan and anti-spyware programs run)? Do i need to reinstall windows 7 (i have a valid product key, can i use someone else's disc and my product key)? Can i just get a copy of run32dll and drop it into the windows system folder?

**Yes, i know that i should have the operating discs with me, but i'm currently part of the haiti relief effort and didn't really have time to pack. I don't have access to them, and i'd rather fix this than use the evil restore portion of my hd.

When i starting the windows (in the first few hours) everything is normal but after 1 day or 2 (sooner or later) the amount of available memory gradually goes down and the physical memory usage increasing. This increasing, continues until the memory usage reaches near the 88% and at that point , there isn't any memory available to operate any software . Also when memory reaches that point, i can't access any drive in the hdd; because everytime i want to open any folder, the following error appears :

C: is not accessible. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. At this point, i even can't shutdown or restart windows normally; i must restart windows manually by pressing the restart button. After restart, everything goes to normal again; but this problem appears again and again. (I had to restart windows every 1 or 2 days)

Here is the screen-shots of processes and performance tabs in the task manager (at 88% memory usage)You can see that there is no software(application) that uses this amount of memory :

I already did the following actions but unfortunately none of them helped me:

0- using some optimizing and freeing softwares like (memory booster gold - ram saver pro - cleanmem)1- scanning my computer with antivirus and antispywares2- changing antivirus software3- updating windows with all updates available via windows update4- updating drivers of all hardwares5- downloading and installing the following hotfixes that are related to memory leak:

I am noticing a weird behavior in my windows 7 since last 2 weeks. I have 4gb ddr2 ram in my laptop and when starting, windows gadget shows the usage to be 26%. After however 2-3 hours of usage, even when all the programs have been shut down, the gadget shows the memory usage to be 40-45%. A few percentage (2-3) higher wouldn't have worried me. But this difference is a bit too much i feel. What could be the probable cause for this? Any idea or any help to diagnose the problem would be much appreciated. To add, there hasn't been any recent changes in my laptop except for regular windows updates. Also i haven't run any diagnostic tools yet.

I installed windows 7 professional 64 bit from a 32 bit vista home prem system and have encountered memory usage problems. Basically, the longer i have windows media player open, the more ram it uses, in other words it keeps increasing until i close it. I reinstalled win7 and found that the problem went away, however, once i updated windows 7 the problem came back. Before i updated, the usage was low, in the 20, 000k range and when i updated it turns on at 30, 000k and increases dramatically. Should i install 32 bit windows 7 or does anybody have a solution?

I have 2 month old hp dv6-1217ax lap top with 4gb ram, i have just installed my windows 7 and now have a problem with over heating - the bios set the fan to be 'on' always which i have changed and i have also found that stacsv.exe (something to do with audio) was chewing up 50% of the cpu so i have ended that process - temporarily until i have to restart. This hasn't affected my audio but i have noticed that when i use the mute function on my laptop the little speaker indicator above the key pad is not turning red but the mute function is still working.

The other issue i am having is that my physical memory is running at a constant 35%? While not running any programs and i haven't been able to find a solution to this.

I have also asked a tech friend who has been in contact with hp regarding these issues and they knew as much as he did - nothing.

I have also been in contact with hp myself and they instructed me to download and install a bois ( winflash for hp notebook system bios (for notebooks with amd processors) " microsoft windows vista-based version f. 17) this basically put my machine back to the same settings as when i had originally when i did the win 7 upgrade. Still got the high cpu usage with the stacsv.exe.

Recently (2-3 days) i noticed that almost all my ram was being used, but no process was using it. As i use stuff like maya, with its known memory leaks, i was somewhat alright with it. Having restarted (ram was now free), the problem disappeared. Within about ~10 minutes, ram usage was at close to 100% with nothing (well, very little) running. Here is a screenshot of the problem:http://img687. Imageshack. Us/img687/2259/aggfdaggfdfgdfgd.png

I then attemped to clean up my boot, and with odd results. It seems like the ram issue has abated (left it overnight running, ram was technically "free". Upon further inspection, the ram, whilst free, is under "standby". What would use this kind of memory? Nothing was running overnight except task manager and resource monitor. I've tried removing programs and services from startup, and the issue still occurs. Does anyone have any insight onto either the full ram usage or the ram standbys possible causes?

I just upgraded to win7 (64 bit). My c drive (intel ssd) has ~75 gb space. When i click on "computer, " it says that the total free space is 25gb (i.e 75gb is used up). But the space occupied by all files/folders adds up to only ~24 gb (~21 gb of this is occupied by "windows" and "windows. Old" folders, ~2. 4 gb by "program files" and "program files (x86)", and very little by other folders/files).

How can i find out what is taking up the rest of the space? I have emptied the recycle bin and have done disk cleanup. In addition, in the advanced settings list, i made sure that "show hidden files, folders and drives" is selected. I also unchecked "hide protected operating system files. ".

I have a number os shared folder on my computer, shared in the old way through advanced sharing. The usual ram load is 1. 49gb as evidenced by task manager showing 4094mb total, 2387mb cached, 2562mb available 215mb free. This morning i realized that my memory usage was 3. 9gb and the numbers didn't add, firing up resource monitor didn't add up suage either it was all "in use" with less than 300mb of cached and 0mb free, it was showing the usual same processes, the thing i discovered with computer manager was that my brother had an 2. 9gb. Iso file mounted in daemon tools in his computer(shared from mine), only mounted it wasn't using it at all and that struck me as odd.

The moment i told him to unmount the iso(and the moment it disappeared from the open files list) memory usage plummeted to normal. During the period of high memory usage, the computer was very sluggish paging left and right whenever i tried to open windows, open tabs in firefox, switch tabs, etc.

I want to know how to fix this horribly wrong behavior as my machine has a ton of files shared and under no circumstance i'll tolerate that eating all my ram(what if i want to start a game when the usage is through the roof?, What if all the other users on the network mount the same file?), On xp i had no such issue and memory usage didn't even flinch on sharing. I have offline files turned off and the service as well. Pc specs: win7 x64 pro, 4gb ram

How can i expand my shared graphics card memory usage? I have a 4gb ram ddr3 laptop which i'm very happy with and it runs windows 7 very smoothly. Lately, i've been trying out games however i realized that the 'game-report-thingys' say that the shared graphics card is only allocating 64mb of ram.

On my laptop itself though, there is a physical sticker which says that the graphics can use a total of 1. 7gb of ram. How can i expand my ram from the current 64mb to 1gb? The bios set up doesn't show any ram allocations for shared graphics cards.

I've been looking and haven't seen anything on this topic, but if there is, sorry, didn't see it. Anyways, i have been getting bsods every 2-4 hours ever since i installed my new processor. I cannot imagine why, but it happens, always saying usb_bugcode. As far as i am concerned the machine runs perfect; everything is fast, including games at 60 fps at least, would probably be even more when my 9800 gt gets back from repair (using a backup 8600 gt while it does). Anyways, people are saying it is my memory, however, like i said, everything is perfect besides the bsods and the occasional install error code.

I find it hard to believe that my 4gbs of ram, which by the way i found no errors on with memtest86 or windows memory diagnostics, suddenly became corrupted right on the minute when i installed my processor, not to mention the speed at which my computer runs. Would anyone know if the graphics card is doing this? Is its vram corrupt? Or is the computer just going mental because i installed a new cpu suddenly? I did format the hdd and reinstalled, so i know it's not viruses. The cpu is an e8400 @ 3. 00 ghz core 2 duo, 4gb of ram, an old 8600 gt, running windows 7 x64.

I have upgraded from win xp to win 7 , with cpu intel celeron d 2. 53 ghz, 1gb ddr2 ram, nvidia geforce 6200 , via vt8237 sata , via rhineii lan and cmedia cmi9761 ac97 audio codec. After updating most of the drivers individually from the different manufacture , the computer become better in performance, however, it is 4 % cpu when idle and 100% when opening any one of the programs , such as word, ie8, etc and doing virus scan by kaspersky.

Notice that , i can not complete the virus scan as it shows messages insufficient memory after 3 hours scanning and then stops the scan. Also , the cmi9761 has no drivers updated for windows 7. Do not know whether the single core cpu is the problem or the 1g ram is not enough.

I have newly upgraded to windows 7 ultimate 32 bit version. I also added a new sata drive and a new floppy drive (needed it for a specific job). It took days to get the sata drive working properly but it seems fine now. My problem: as often as once a minute the cpu use goes to 100%. At that point everything freezes and i have to sit and wait for some of the cpu to clear. I haven't timed it but the wait is approximately 1-2 minutes. This happens apparently randomly, and it happens a lot.

I have watched the task manager's processes tab and an on screen cpu meter (a gadget). Only two processes ever go high. One is a game. The other is something called "system idle process". I have no idea what that is or what it does. I am watching the processes in task manager right now. To add to the confusion, the system idle process is up to 97 but cpu usage has remained at 1-4%. Can anyone out there give me information about how to track the cause down?

I've been running windows 7 64 bit on my hp hdx 18t laptop for months (since the rtm) and noticed that every once in awhile my computer would stop responding for a 1-2 seconds and then be back. It seems to do this randomly. Sometimes i notice it happen a couple times in a 10 minute period, sometimes once and then not again, sometimes i never notice it. After having this happen sometimes i ran the resource monitor and turns out that the cpu frequency is going to zero for a moment and then coming back. Has anyone else run into this?

My bios and cpu drivers are up to date. When i was running vista i didn’t have this issue (i did not upgrade from vista – i did a fresh install). Seems like the occurrence increases when i run vmware.

Just switched to windows 7 and im starting to notice that my pc is starting to trying to shutdown . Its giving off the the noise it usually makes when it shutdowns like every hour but doesn't really shutdown . I have changed the power setting to never shutdown. It never did this when i was using windows xp so it somewhat seeming very strange. I looked up some info on the internet but that said it may be synchronization with my pc clock but that's not the case.

I have opened it to make sure everything was still running fine and of course they are but the continuous shutdown noise is bothering me still. My board is windows 7 compatible. Oh im am running windows 32 bit version if that helps. Any info on how to solve my problem would be greatly appreciated ty for your time drm my pc specs intel core i5 650 3. 20gh biostar th55b hdgskill ddr3 1300 single channel 4gb ram evga 8400gs 512mb ddr2 graphic card

I have had a problem the last 2 weeks. My sons pc has suddenly started to behave badly when he is playing games. The are choppy and behaves strange. The same games worked perfectly before and just a few things has been altered. When i look at the cpu it's at a constant of 70-100% and it "spikes" every second. That behavior fits the problem it the games he plays.

When i look in task manager it shows that wmiprvse.exe has two processes running. One at 35-50% and one at 10-12%. At first i uninstalled avast 5 and reinstalled mse (the problem started about the time we changed the av) but it didn't help. I have also tried process-explorer and the only thing it tells me is several "ntdll.dll!Rtluserthreadstart" within wmiprvse.exe.

I have scanned the system for viruses and also scanned for malware but my system is clean. The system works fine in itself (windows 7 ultimate retail) but the hight cpu-spikes is really noticeable when a games is played. Of-course the system is up to date with all the latest drivers and updates from wu. What can i do?

My windows 7 dell laptop has recently become really slow. Cpu load is way up high, the fan is on full speed and the hard disk is very busy. Task manager shows that wininit.exe is permanently using 50% of the cpu with other processes mostly using no more than a few percent. In safe mode, wininit behaves itself and cpu load remains low. In fact i'm writing this post in safe mode because the computer is too slow to use in normal mode. I've run virus scans with avg and panda and both came back clean. I can't remember what i did, if anything, to make this start but i'd be grateful for any ideas on how to make it stop.

I used xp and purchased windows 7, installed the 64 bit version and everything worked great. Then one day an important windows driver got deleted and there was nothing i could do but a clean install. I could not get the 64 -bit disk to read for some reason so i installed the 32. Now before the clean install, i could run two gaming windows and surf the net and my cpu would be around 30%.

Also when i rated my system my cpu was in the 6's. Now when i open one game window and nothing else, my cpu is 100%. And now my cpu is rated in the 4's. What could have made my cpu rate lower? I have downloaded the mobo drivers for windows 7 from my mobo manufacturer. I called tech support and think i got an asian kid that is still in high school. He did not have a clue as to how to fix it. I just did a clean install and he had me cleaning out my temp folders and other files which made my system unresponsive, once again had to do another clean install .

Cpu is still running poorly with windows 7. I have tried several things mentioned in the forums like disabling the windows media stuff but it did not work. The biggest thing soaking up my cpu is the system idle process which is always above 60%. I really like the windows 7 look but am close to just chalking it up to a wasted $140 and going back to xp. I thought windows 7 was supposed to be better than vista when it comes to resources but it seems much worse.

I want to use the most of my cpu power in xp mode of window 7. I am using amd x620 with 4 cores and 6g of ram. My machines work wonderfully in window 7 - very fast. But, when i only use xp mode in window 7, it seems that only one core out of four cores of my amd x620 is working, the remaining three cores/cpus are still in "holiday". That is, can virtual window create virtual machines with 4 virtual processors or 4 virtual cores per virtual machine? If so, what should i do to get the three lasz cores work harder?